With advancements in technology and young peoples’ increased use of mobile devices, social media, and the Internet, it’s imperative that school district staff understand potential risks and dangerous outcomes. Sextortion is a growing form of child sexual exploitation that is tied to youths’ use of social media and data apps.
Sextortion is the practice of extorting money or sexual favors from someone by threatening to reveal evidence of their sextual activity. It has been gaining prevalence among 18-24 year olds, especially on high school and college campuses, but there is also a current trend where boys between 14 and 17 are targeted. This increasing threat has resulted in an alarming number of deaths by suicide.
“At North Royalton City Schools, we began to notice the trends of cyberbullying via cellular devices in 2004,” said School Resource Officer Jon Karl, North Royalton City Schools. “Before smartphones, kids were using text messages to intimidate and harass each other. I collaborated with the technology teachers to work on lessons for the middle school level students. We began at every grade level 5 to 8 and never looked back. We have evolved as the devices have evolved and addressed new issues as they arrive in stores.
The federal document, Guide for Developing High-Quality School Emergency Operations Plans, provides resources that can be shared with parents/caregivers to prevent a student from becoming a sextortion victim or predator:
• Sextortion (before): Prevent students from becoming victims by adding a sextortion prevention training for all students and staff as a part of health education, cyber safety and security, and/or anti-bullying programs.
Sextortion (during): Use reporting and intervention services in collaboration with law enforcement and mental health partners. Make it a requirement that all incidents of sextortion must be reported to the proper authorities.
Sextortion (after): Provide restoration services to students to reintegrate them into the learning environment. Provide continued school counseling services to survivors of sextortion.
How to Address the Issue
There are various methods that schools and school districts can use to address the issue of sextortion. A comprehensive sextortion program addressing prevention, protection, response, and recovery may include the following courses of action for key populations:
School Emergency Managers: Add sextortion to the list of adversarial- and human-caused threats within school EOPs, and work to develop goals, objectives, and courses of action for faculty, staff, and community partners, including law enforcement.
School Instructional and Curriculum Development Staff: Include instructional materials on sextortion as a part of health education, cyber security, and/or anti-bullying programs and/or curriculums.
School Mental Health Staff: Train school counselors and mental health practitioners on risk factors and signs that students are or may become victims or perpetrators of sextortion. In addition, provide training on how to implement counseling services to support sextortion survivors, perpetrators, and families.
Teachers: Create checklists for teachers on what to do if they suspect a student has become a victim of or is perpetrating the crime of sextortion.
Students: Create a peer-to-peer network of student leaders who encourage students to report incidents of sextortion and suspected perpetrators, and discourage photo-sharing, which is often associated with the crime.
Community Partners: Develop MOUs and Memorandums of Agreement with community partners that outline how schools and partners will work together to report, respond to, and help students and school communities recover from cases of sextortion.
Parents/Guardians: Provide information and tips to district caregivers that include websites and/or publications that help protect youth at home and that teach the legal consequences of sextortion. Protection strategies may include raising awareness of the issue and providing prevention tips, including the addition of layered security to home computers.
Officer Karl offers these points to consider:
- Parental supervision and control is important. It is not safe to resign oneself to the notion that kids know more than adults do so it’s impossible to keep up.
- It is not safe to respond to calls, emails, or messages from unrecognized senders.
- Online gaming is a primary source of introduction to predators for teens and preteens.
- Peer groups are also a primary source for introduction to actual sexting behaviors.
- Once a message is created it can never be fully deleted and photos tend to resurface frequently.
- Law enforcement primarily becomes involved in cases of telecommunications harassment and pandering obscenity. Telecommunications harassment is when one sends any message that is annoying, harassing, threatening, or unwanted. Pandering obscenity is defined as sending, receiving, possessing or asking for photos of a person under 18 in any state of nudity.
RESOURCES:
Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force - This is a federally backed international criminal investigative effort. Any tiplines referenced anywhere will lead back to the regional investigative center.
National Center For Missing and Exploited Children - They facilitate "Netsmartz." NCMEC is an internationally-available resource that uses research-based curriculum for teachers, parents, law enforcement and communities.
Crisis Text Line
Mental Health Resources & Supports Sextortion Information:
What Parents and Kids/Teen's Need to Know from the FBI
Sextortion: What Families Should Know
Suicide Contagion
Investigative Programs, Crimes Against Children, Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Privacy Technical Assistance Center, U.S. Department of Education
Project Safe Childhood Website, U.S. Department of Justice
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